The rise and fall of the Overwatch League - Understanding desiring production esports - a talk by Maria Ruotsalainen

Abstract

In my talk, I focus on esports as a contemporary cultural video game phenomenon through one case: The Overwatch League. In my talk, I focus on esports as a contemporary cultural video game phenomenon through one case: The Overwatch League. The Overwatch League was organized in 2018 - 2024 by the developer of the video game Overwatch, Blizzard Entertainment (2016). The Overwatch League was a franchised esports league, following established sports in many ways in its structure. As teams had to pay substantial sums (from 10 millions upward) to participate in the Overwatch League, Overwatch was seen to be the next big thing in esports, in particular in mainstreaming esports, thus in making esports (and to an extent gaming at large) commercially viable and socially acceptable. However, the Overwatch League was shut down in 2024 and is largely considered as a failed endeavour.The sportification and mainstreaming of Overwatch esports (and the eventual failure of this) impacted the fans of the Overwatch League. The Overwatch esports fandom, such as the subreddit r/competitiveoverwatch and its participants, negotiated their participation in the intersection of gendered gaming practices, nationalism, late stage capitalism, and geopolitics. These different, sometimes contradicting, forces played crucial role in the desiring production (as coined by Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari in Anti-Oidipus 1972) of the Overwatch esports, amounting both to committed investment of the Overwatch League and to its disavowal by its fans. I examine these territorialization and deterritarializations both during the Overwatch League and after its ending and ask what they tell us about why we want the things we want (in esports) and how desires are formed in competitive play and practices around it.